Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, September, 1880

The passion for horse-racing, which for more than two centuries has made the sport a national one in England, cannot be said to exist in France, and the introduction of this "pastime of princes" into the latter country has been of comparatively recent date. Mention, it is true, has been found of races on the plain of Les Sablons as early as 1776, and in the next year a sweepstakes of forty horses, followed by one of as many asses, was run at Fontainebleau in the presence of the court. But it is not until 1783 that one meets with the semblance of an organization, and this as a mere caprice of certain grandees, who affected an English style in everything, and who thought to introduce the customs of the English turf along with the chapeau Anglais and the riding-coat. It was notably the comte d'Artois (afterward Charles X.), the duc de Chartres (Philippe Égalité), the marquis de Conflans and the prince de Guéménée who fancied themselves obliged, in their character of Anglomaniacs, to patronize the race-course; but the public of that time, to whom this imitation of English manners was not only an absurdity, but almost a treason against the state, gave but a cold reception to the attempted innovation. Racing, too, from its very nature, found itself in direct conflict with all the traditions of the ancient school of equitation, and it encountered from the beginning the severe censure and opposition of horsemen accustomed to the measured paces of the manége, whose highest art consisted in consuming a whole hour in achieving at a gallop the length of the terrace of St. Germain. The professors of this equestrian minuet, as solemn and formal in the saddle as was the dancer Dupré in the ballets of the period, predicted the speedy decay of the old system of horsemanship and the extinction of the native breed of horses if France should allow her soil to be invaded by foreign thoroughbreds with their English jockeys and trainers. The first French sportsmen—to use the word in its limited sense—thus found themselves not only unsupported by public opinion, but alone in the midst of an actively-hostile community, and no one can say how the unequal contest might have ended had not the graver events of the Revolution intervened to put an end, for a time at least, not only to the luxurious pleasures, but to all the hopes and ambitions, of the noble class of idlers.

The wars with England that followed retarded for a quarter of a century the introduction of racing into France. The first ministerial ordinance in which the words pur sang occur is that of the 3d of March, 1833, signed by Louis Philippe and countersigned by Adolphe Thiers, establishing a register of the thoroughbreds existing in France—in other words, a national stud-book, by which name it is universally known. The following year witnessed the foundation of the celebrated Society for the Encouragement of the Improvement of Breeds of French Horses, more easily recognized under the familiar title of the "Jockey Club." The first report of this society exposed the deplorable condition of all the races of horses in the country, exhausted as they had been by the frightful draughts made upon them in the imperial wars, and concluded by urging the necessity of the creation of a pure native stock, of which the best individuals, to be selected by trial of their qualities of speed and endurance upon the track, should be devoted to reproduction. This was the doctrine which had been practically applied in England, and which had there produced in less than a century the most important and valuable results. France had but to follow the example of her neighbor, and, borrowing from the English stock of thoroughbreds, to establish a regular system of races as the means of developing and improving the breed of horses upon her own soil.

This reasoning seemed logical enough, but the administration of the Haras, or breeding-stables—which is in France a branch of the civil service—opposed this innovation, and contended that the only pure type of horse was the primitive Arab, and that every departure from this resulted in the production of an animal more or less degenerate and debased. The reply of the Jockey Club was, that the English thoroughbred is, in fact, nothing else than a pure Arab, modified only by the influences of climate and treatment, and that it would be much wiser and easier to profit by a result already obtained than to undertake to retrace, with all its difficulties and delays, the same road that England had taken a century to travel.

The experience gained since 1833 has shown that the conclusions of the Jockey Club were right, but the evidence of facts and of the results obtained has not yet brought the discussion to a close. The administration of the Haras still keeps up its opposition to the raising of thoroughbreds, and will no doubt continue to do so for some time to come, so tenacious is the hold of routine—or, as the Englishman might say, of red tape—upon the official mind in France, whether the question be one of finance, of war or of the breeding of horses.

But it is not only against the ill-will of the administration that the Jockey Club has had to struggle during all these years: it has had also to contend with the still more disheartening indifference of the public in the matter of racing. There is no disputing the fact that the genuine lover of the horse, the homme de cheval—or, if I may be forgiven a bit of slang for the sake of its expressiveness, the horsey man, whether he be coachman or groom, jockey or trainer—is not in France a genuine product of the soil, as he seems to be in England. Look at the difference between the cabman of London and his brother of Paris, if there be enough affinity between them to justify this term of relationship. The one drives his horse, the other seems to be driven by his. In London the driver of an omnibus has the air of a gentleman managing a four-in-hand: in Paris the imbecile who holds the reins looks like a workman who has been hired by the day to do a job that he doesn't understand. So pronounced is this antipathy—for it is more than indifference—of the genuine man of the people toward all things pertaining to the horse that, notwithstanding all the encouragements that for nearly half a century have been lavishly offered for the purpose of developing a public taste in this direction, not a single jockey or trainer who can properly be called a Frenchman has thus far made his appearance. All the men and boys employed in the racing-stables are of English origin, though many, perhaps most, of them have been born in France; but the purity of their English blood, so important in their profession, is as jealously preserved by consanguineous marriages as is that of the noble animals in their charge. It was an absolute necessity for the early turfmen of France to import the Anglo-Saxon man with the Anglo-Arabian horse if they would bring to a creditable conclusion the programme of 1833. And during all the long period that has since elapsed what courage and patience, what determined will, to say nothing of the prodigious expenditure of money, have been shown by the founders of the race-course in France and by their successors! Their perseverance has had its reward, indeed, in the brilliancy of the results obtained, but there is still due to them an ampler tribute of recognition than they have yet received, and it will be a grateful duty to dwell for a while upon the history of the Jockey Club.

Of its fourteen original members but two survive, the duc de Nemours and M. Ernest Leroy. The other twelve were His Royal Highness the duc d'Orléans, M. Rieussec, who was killed by the infernal machine of Fieschi, the comte de Cambis, equerry to the duc d'Orléans, Count Demidoff, Fasquel, the chevalier de Machado, the prince de la Moskowa, M. de Normandie, Lord Henry Seymour, Achille Delamarre, Charles Lafitte and Caccia. To these fourteen gentlemen were soon added others of the highest rank or of the first position in the aristocratic world of Paris. People began to talk with bated breath of the Jockey Club and of its doings, and strange stories were whispered of the habits of some of its distinguished members. The eccentricities of Count Demidoff and of Major Frazer, the obstreperous fooleries of Lord Henry Seymour, the studied extravagances of Comte d'Alton-Shee, created in the public mind the impression that the club was nothing less than a sort of infernal pit, peopled by wicked dandies like Balzac's De Marsay, Maxime de Trailles, Rastignac, etc. Even the box of the club at the opera was dubbed with the uncanny nickname loge infernale, and the talk of the town ran upon the frightful sums lost and won every night at the tables of the exclusive cercle, while the nocturnal passer-by pointed with a shudder to the windows of the first floor at the corner of the Rue de Grammont and the Boulevard, glimmering until morning dawn with a light altogether satanic. The truth must be confessed that jeunesse dorée of the period affected a style somewhat "loud." There was exaggeration in everything—in literature—for it was the epoch of the great romantic impulse—in art, in politics: what wonder, then, that the distractions of high life should over-pass the boundaries of good taste, and even of propriety? The Jockey Club in the time of Louis Philippe did but recall the good old days of Brookes's and of White's, of the two Foxes, of George Selwyn and of Sheridan. But how changed is all this! There is not to-day in Paris, perhaps in the world, a more sedate, reputable and in every sense temperate club than the "Jockey." It concerns itself only with racing, the legitimate object of its foundation, and nothing else is discussed in its salons, if we except one room, which under the Empire was baptized "The Camp of Châlons," for the reason that it had come to be reserved for the use of the old soldiers, who met there to talk over incidents of army life. Baccarat, that scourge of Parisian clubs, is forbidden, and lovers of play are obliged to content themselves with a harmless rubber of whist. As one black ball in six is sufficient to exclude a candidate—or, to use the official euphemism, to cause his "postponement"—it is not difficult for the coterie that controls the club to keep it clear of all noisy, or even of merely too conspicuous, individuality. Lord Henry Seymour would be "pilled" to-day by a probably unanimous vote. A candidate may enjoy all the advantages of wealth and position, he may have the entrée to all the salons, and may even be a member of clubs as exclusive as the Union and the Pommes-de-Terre, and yet he may find himself unable to gain admission to the Jockey. Any excess of notoriety, any marked personal eccentricity, would surely place him under the ban. Scions of ancient families, who have had the wisdom to spend in the country and with their parents the three or four years succeeding their college life, would have a much better chance of admission than a leader of fashion such as I have described. The illustrious General de Charette; M. Soubeyran, at that time governor of the Crédit foncier of France; the young Henry Say, brother-in-law of the prince A. de Broglie, rich and accomplished, and the owner, moreover, of a fine racing-stable; together with many other gentlemen whose private lives were above suspicion,—have been blackballed for the simple reason that they were too widely known. As to foreigners, let them avoid the mortification of certain defeat by abstaining from offering themselves, unless indeed they should happen to be the possessors of a great historic name or should occupy in their own country a position out of the reach of ordinary mortals. This careful exclusion of all originality and diversity has, by degrees, communicated to the club a complexion somewhat negative and colorless, but at the same time, it must be admitted, of the most perfect distinction. The most influential members, although generally very wealthy, live in Paris with but few of the external signs of luxury, and devote their incomes to home comforts and to the improvement of their estates. If one should happen to meet on the Champs Élysées a mail-coach or a daumont [an open carriage, the French name of which has been adopted by the English, like landau, etc. It is drawn by two horses driven abreast, and each mounted by a postilion. The nearest English equivalent is a "victoria."] that makes the promenaders turn and look back, or if there be an avant-scène at the Variétés or the Palais Royal that serves as a point of attraction for all the lorgnettes of the theatre, one may be quite sure that the owners of these brilliant turnouts and the occupants of this envied box are not members of the club—"the Club," par excellence, for thus is it spoken of in Paris. It is considered quite correct at the club to devote one's self to the raising of cattle and sheep, as the comtes de Bouvillé, de Béhague, de Hauteserre and others have done with such success, and one may even follow the example of the comte de Falloux, the eloquent Academician, in emblazoning with one's arms a pen of fat pigs at a competitive show, without in the least derogating from one's dignity. One may also sell the wine from one's vineyards and the iron from one's furnaces—for the iron industry is in France looked upon as a sort of heritage of the nobility—but to get money by any other means than those I have indicated would be considered in the worst possible taste. On the other hand, it is permitted to any member of the club to lose as much money as he pleases without loss of the respect of his fellows, and the surest way to arrive at this result is to undertake the breeding and running of horses.

As to the external appearance and bearing of the perfect clubman, it is very much that of Disraeli's hero, "who could hardly be called a dandy or a beau. There was nothing in his dress, though some mysterious arrangement in his costume—some rare simplicity, some curious happiness—always made him distinguished: there was nothing, however, in his dress, which could account for the influence that he exercised over the manners of his contemporaries;" and it is probably a fact that a member of the club is never noticed by passers on the street on account of anything in his dress or appearance. In short, the club seems to have adopted for its motto Sancta simplicitas, and the descendants of the old nobility of France, excluded as they practically are to-day from all public employment save that of the army, seem determined to live amongst themselves, in tranquillity and retirement, in such a way as to attract the least possible notice from the press or from the crowd. Their portraits never find their way into the illustrated papers, and no penny-a-liner ventures to make them the subject of a biographical sketch: indeed, any one rash enough to seek to tread upon this forbidden ground would find himself met at the threshold by a dignified but very decided refusal of all information and material necessary to his undertaking.

As an illustration of the care taken by the ruling spirits of the club to preserve the attitude which they have assumed toward the public, it may be worth mentioning that Isabelle, who for a long time enjoyed the distinction of serving the club as its accredited flower-girl, and who in that capacity used to hold herself in readiness every evening in her velvet tub at the foot of the staircase of the splendid apartments at the corner of the Boulevard and the Rue Scribe—the present location of the club—was dismissed for no other reason than that she had become too extensively known to the gay world of Paris. Excluded from the sacred paddock on the race-course, she is to-day compelled to content herself on great occasions with selling her flowers on the public turf from a pretty basket-wagon drawn by a pair of coquettish black ponies, or "toy" ponies in the language of the day.

Notwithstanding the magnificence of the present quarters of the club to which I have referred, one cannot help regretting that, unlike the Agricultural Society and the Club of the Champs Élysés, it is obliged to confine itself to one story of the building—the first floor, according to continental enumeration—though the rental of this floor alone amounts to some three hundred thousand francs a year.

The committee on races, composed of fifteen members (founders) and fifteen associate members—the latter elected every year by the founders—represents the club in all that concerns its finances and property, votes the budget, the programme of all races and the conditions of the prizes, and not only legislates in making the laws that govern the course, but acts also as judge in deciding questions that may arise under the code that it has established. And as a legislative body it has its hands almost as full as that of the state, for the budget of the society grows from year to year as rapidly as the nation's, and there are now forty-nine turfs for which it is responsible or to which it has extended its protection. The presidency of the committee, after having been held for many years by the lamented Vicomte Daru, passed on his death last year to M. Auguste Lupin, the oldest proprietor of race-horses in France. To M. Lupin, moreover, belongs the honor of being the first breeder in France who has beaten the English in their own country by gaining the Goodwood Cup in 1855 with Jouvence—success that was renewed by his horse Dollar in 1864. M. Lupin, who had six times won the Jockey Club Purse (the French Derby) and twice the Grand Prix de Paris, occupies very much the same position in France that Lord Falmouth holds in England, and, like him, he never bets. His colors, black jacket and red cap, are exceedingly popular, and received even more than their wonted share of applause in the year 1875, the most brilliant season in the history of his stables, when he carried off all the best prizes with St. Cyr, Salvator and Almanza. His stud, which has numbered amongst its stallions the Baron, Dollar and the Flying Dutchman, is at Vaucresson, near Versailles. His training-stables are at La Croix, St. Ouen.

Of the remaining members of the committee on races, the best known are the prince de la Moskowa, the comte A. de Noailles, Henry Delamarre, Comte Frédéric de Lagrange, Comte A. des Cars, J. Mackenzie-Grieves, Comte H. de Turtot, the duc de Fitz-James, Baron Shickler, the prince A. d'Aremberg, Prince Joachim Murat, Comte Roederer, the marquis de Lauriston, Baron Gustave de Rothschild, E. Fould and the comtes de St. Sauveur, de Kergorlay and de Juigné. Most of these gentlemen run their horses, or have done so, and the list will be found to comprise, with two or three exceptions, the principal turfmen of France. The comte de Juigné and the prince d'Aremberg, both very rich, and much liked in Paris, have formed a partnership in turf matters, and the colors they have adopted, yellow and red stripes for the jacket, with black cap, are always warmly welcomed. In 1873, with Montargis, they won the Cambridgeshire Stakes, which were last year carried off by the American horse Parole, and in 1877 they renewed the exploit with Jongleur. The count, on this latter occasion, had taken no pains to conceal the merits of his horse, but, on the contrary, had spoken openly of what he believed to be his chances, and had even advised the betting public to risk their money upon him. As the English were giving forty to one against him, the consequence of M. de Juigné's friendly counsel was that the morning after the race saw a perfect shower of gold descending upon Paris, the English guineas falling even into the white caps held out with eager hands by the scullions of the cafés that line the Boulevard. One well-known restaurateur, Catelain, of the Restaurant Helder on the Boulevard des Italiens, pocketed a million of francs, and testified his satisfaction, if not his gratitude, by forthwith baptizing a new dish with the name of the winning horse. The comte de Juigné himself cleared three millions, and many members of the club were made the richer by sums ranging from one hundred to one hundred and fifty thousand francs. The marquis de Castellane, an habitual gambler, who happened to have put only a couple of hundred louis on the horse, could not hide his chagrin that his venture had returned him but a hundred and sixty thousand francs. Jongleur won the French Derby (one hundred and three thousand francs) in 1877, besides thirteen other important races. He was unfortunately killed while galloping in his paddock in September, 1878.

The Scotch jacket and white cap of the duc de Fitz-James, owner of the fine La Sorie stud, and the same colors, worn by the jockeys of the duc de Fézenzac, have won but few of the prizes of the turf, and another nobleman, the comte de Berteux (green jacket, red cap) is noted for the incredible persistency of his bad luck. M. Édouard Fould, whose mount is known by the jackets hooped with yellow and black and caps of the latter color, is the proprietor of the well-known D'Ibos stud at the foot of the Pyrenees, one of the largest and best-ordered establishments of the kind in France; and it is to him and to his uncle, the late Achille Fould, that the South owes in a great degree the breeding and development of the thoroughbred horse. M. Delâtre (green jacket and cap) raises every year, at La Celle St. Cloud, some twenty yearlings, of which he keeps but three or four, selling the rest at Tattersall's, Rue Beaujon, to the highest bidder. They generally bring about six thousand francs a head, on an average.

The feeling against Germany after the war led to a proposition to expel from the club all members belonging to that country; and it was only the liking and sympathy felt for one of them, Baron Schickler, a very wealthy lover of the turf and for a long time resident in France, which caused a rejection of the motion. Baron Schickler, however, has nominally retired from the turf since 1870, and his horses are now run under the pseudonyme of Davis. His colors are white for the jacket, with red sleeves and cherry cap. Another member, Mr. A. de Montgomery, the excellent Norman breeder and the fortunate owner of La Toucques and of Fervaques, has also given up racing under his own name, and devotes himself exclusively to the oversight of the Rothschild stables. The good-fortune which the mere possession of this distinguished name would seem sufficient to ensure has not followed the colors of Baron Gustave de Rothschild in the racing field, where his blue jackets and yellow caps have not been the first to reach the winning-post in the contests for the most important prizes. He buys, nevertheless, the best mares and the finest stallions, and he has to-day, in his excellent stud at Meautry, the illustrious Boïard, who had won, before he came into the baron's possession, the Ascot Cup of 1873 and the Grand Prix de Paris. The Rothschild training-stables are at Chantilly. Boïard, as well as Vermont, another of the grandest horses ever foaled in France, and a winner also of the Grand Prix de Paris, was formerly in possession of M. Henry Delamarre, who in the days of the Empire enjoyed a short period of most remarkable success, having won the French Derby no less than three times within four years. His choice of colors was a maroon jacket with red sleeves and black cap. He had some lesser triumphs last year, at the autumn meeting in the Bois de Boulogne, where his mare Reine Claude won the Prix du Moulin by two lengths, his horse Vicomte, who up to that time had been running so badly, taking the Prix d'Automne, while the second prize of the same name was carried off by Clélié, thus gaining for the Delamarre stables three races out of the five contested on that day. All M. Delamarre's horses come from the Bois-Roussel stud, belonging to Comte Roederer.

There remain to be mentioned, amongst the number of gentlemen who are in the habit of entering their horses for races in France, a Belgian, the comte de Meeüs, one of whose horses was the favorite in the race last mentioned, and though beaten, as often happens with favorites, he and other animals from the same stables have this year carried away several of the provincial prizes; M.L. André, owner of this season's winners of the steeple-chase handicap known as the Prix de Pontoise and of several hurdle-races; M.A. de Borda, who was unsuccessful in the present year in three at least of the races in which he had entered; M.E. de la Charme, who in June, 1879, took the Grand Prix du Conseil-Général (handicap) at Lyons, and in September won at Vincennes the hurdle-race Prix de Charenton; the marquis de Caumont-Laforce, whose colors were first this summer at Moulins in the Prix du Conseil-Général, and in the third Criterium at Fontainebleau, as well as in the grand handicap at Beauvais last July; M.P. Aumont, who has been not without some good luck in the provinces during the past season; M. Moreau-Chaslon, whose successes of late have hardly been in proportion to his numerous entries, though he won the last Prix des Villas at Vésinet, the Prix du Jockey Club (three thousand francs) at Châlons-sur-Saône and the Prix du Mont-Valérien at the Bois de Boulogne; and, to bring to an end our long list of devotees of the turf, we add the name of M. Ephrussi, who, amongst the numerous races in which he has entered horses in 1879, has been victorious in not a few—for instance, in the steeple-chase handicap at La Marche, called the Prix de Clairefontaine, in L'Express at Fontainebleau, in the Prix de Neuilly at the Bois de Boulogne, and in the handicap for the Prix des Écuries at Chantilly, as well as in a race for gentlemen riders only at Maison-Lafitte. Besides these and others, he gained last August the Jockey Club Prize (five thousand francs) at Châlons-sur-Saône, the Prix de Louray at Déauville for the like amount, another of the same figures at Vichy, and the six thousand francs of the Grand Prix du Havre. Most of the gentlemen last named are the owners of a comparatively small number of horses, which are, perhaps without exception, entrusted to the care of the famous trainer Henry Jennings of La Croix, St. Ouen, near Compiègne.

Henry Jennings is a character. His low, broad-brimmed beaver—which has gained him the sobriquet of "Old Hat"—pulled well down over a square-built head, the old-fashioned high cravat in which his neck is buried to the ears, the big shoes ensconced in clumsy gaiters, give him more the air of a Yorkshire gentleman-farmer of the old school than of a man whose home since his earliest youth has been in France. He is one of the most original figures in the motley scene as he goes his rounds in the paddock, mysterious and knowing, very sparing of his words, and responding only in monosyllables even to the questions of his patrons, while he whispers in the ears of his jockeys the final instructions which many an interested spectator would give something to hear. Beginning his career in the service of the prince de Beauvan, from which he passed first to that of the duc de Morny and afterward to that of the comte de Lagrange, he is now a public trainer upon his own account, with more than a hundred horses under his care. No one has devoted more intelligent study to the education of the racer or shown a more intuitive knowledge of his nature and of his needs. It was he who first threw off the shackles of ancient custom by which a horse during the period of training was kept in such an unnatural condition, by means of drugs and sweatings, that at the end of his term of probation he was a pitiful object to behold. The pictures and engravings of twenty years ago bear witness to the degree of "wasting" to which a horse was reduced on the eve of a race, and the caricatures of the period are hardly over-drawn when they exhibit to us the ghost of an animal mounted by a phantom jockey. When people saw that Jennings was able to bring to the winning-post horses in good condition, whose training had been based upon nothing but regular work, they at first looked on in astonishment, but afterward found their profit in imitating his example. Under this rational system it has been proved that the animal gains in power and endurance while he loses nothing in speed. The same intrepid trainer has ventured upon another innovation. Impressed with the inconveniences of shoeing, and annoyed by the difficulty of finding a skilful smith in moving from one place to another in the country, he conceived the idea of letting his horses go shoeless, both during training and on the track; and, despite all that could be urged against the practice his horses' feet are in excellent condition. His many successes on the turf have not, however, been crowned, as yet, by the Grand Prix de Paris, though in 1877 he thought to realize the dream of his ambition with Jongleur, whom he had trained and whom he loved like a son; and when the noble horse was beaten by an outsider, St Christopher, "Old Hat" could not control an exhibition of ill-humor as amusing as it was touching. When Jongleur died Jennings wept for perhaps the first time in his life, and he was still unable to restrain his tears when he described the tortures of the poor beast as he struck his head against the sides of his box in the agonies of lockjaw.

Let us close our list—in which, however, we have endeavored to enumerate only the principal figures upon the French turf—with two names; and first that of the young Edmond Blanc, heir to the immense fortune gained by his late father as director of the famous gaming-tables of Monaco. The latter, like a prudent parent, forbade his son to race or to play, and Edmond, obeying the letter of the law—at least during the lifetime of his father—was known, if known at all upon the course, under the pseudonyme of James. At present, however, he is the owner of an important stud and stable which are constantly increasing, and which bid fair before long to take rank amongst the principal establishments in the country. Waggish tongues have whispered that when he had to make choice of colors he naturally inclined to "rouge et noir," but finding these already appropriated by M. Lupin, the representative of "trente et quarante" was forced to content himself with tints more brilliant perhaps, but less suggestive. But let him laugh who wins. The annals of the turf for 1879 inscribe the name of M. Blanc as winner of the Grand Prix de Paris. It was his mare, Nubienne, who first reached the winning-post by a neck in a field of eleven horses, M. Fould's Saltéador being second, with barely a head between him and the third, Flavio II., belonging to the comte Frédéric de Lagrange.

This latter proprietor, the most celebrated of all—in the sense of being the most widely known and the most talked about—I have reserved for the end of my catalogue. Comte de Lagrange made his début upon the turf in the year 1857, now more than twenty years ago, by buying outright the great stable of M. Alexander Aumont, which boasted at that time amongst its distinguished ornaments the famous Monarque, who had, before passing into the hands of his new owner, gained eight races in eight run, and who, under the colors of the comte, almost repeated the feat by winning eight in nine; and of these two were the Goodwood Cup and the Newmarket Handicap. Afterward, at the Dangu stud, he achieved a fame of another sort, but in the eyes of horsemen perhaps still more important. Never has sire transmitted to his colts his own best qualities with such certainty and regularity. Hospodar, Le Mandarin, Trocadéro were amongst his invaluable gifts to the comte, but his crowning glory is the paternity of the illustrious Gladiateur, the Eclipse of modern times. Gladiateur, said the baron d'Étreilly, recalls Monarque as one hundred recalls ten. There were the very same lines, the same length of clean muscular neck well set on the same deep and grandly-placed shoulders, the same arching of the loins, the same contour of hips and quarters, but all in proportions so colossal that every one who saw him, no matter how indifferent to horseflesh in general, remained transfixed in admiration of a living machine of such gigantic power.

The first appearance of Gladiateur upon the race-course was at the Newmarket autumn meeting of 1864, where he won the Clearwell Stakes, beating a field of twelve horses. He was kept sufficiently "shady," however, during the winter to enable his owner to make some advantageous bets upon him, though it required careful management to conceal his extraordinary powers. His training remains a legend in the annals of the stables of Royal-Lieu, where the jockeys will tell you how he completely knocked all the other horses out of time, and how two or three of the very best put in relay to wait upon him were not enough to cover the distance. Fille-de-l'Air herself had to be sacrificed, and it was in one of these terrible gallops that she finished her career as a runner. Mandarin alone stood out, but even he, they say, showed such mortal terror of the trial that when he was led out to accompany his redoubtable brother he trembled from head to foot, bathed in sweat. In 1865, Gladiateur gained the two thousand guineas and the Derby at Epsom, and for the first time the blue ribbon was borne away from the English. "When Gladiateur runs," said the English papers at this time, "the other horses hardly seem to move." The next month he ran for the Grand Prix de Paris. His jockey, Harry Grimshaw, had the coquetry to keep him in the rear of the field almost to the end, as if he were taking a gallop for exercise, and when Vertugadin reached the last turn the favorite, some eight lengths behind, seemed to have forgotten that he was in the race at all. The public had made up its mind that it had been cheated, when all at once the great horse, coming up with a rush, passed all his rivals at a bound, to resume at their head his former easy and tranquil pace. There had not been even a contest: Gladiateur had merely put himself on his legs, and all had been said. These three victories brought in to Comte de Lagrange the sum of four hundred and forty-one thousand seven hundred and twenty-five francs, to say nothing of the bets. Gladiateur afterward won the race of six thousand mètres (two miles fourteen furlongs) which now bears his name, and also the Great St. Leger at Doncaster. He was beaten but once—in the Cambridgeshire, where he was weighted at a positively absurd figure, and when, moreover, the track was excessively heavy. After his retirement from the turf he was sold in 1871 for breeding purposes in England for two hundred thousand francs, and died in 1876.

Like M. Fould and several other brethren of the turf, Comte de Lagrange felt the discouragements of the Franco-German war, and sold all his horses to M. Lefèvre. Fortunately, however, he had retained in his stud at Dangu a splendid lot of breeding-mares, and with these he has since been able to reconstruct a stable of the first order, though the effort has cost him a very considerable sum. Indeed, he himself admits that to cover expenses he would have to make as much as thirty thousand pounds every year. Four times victorious in the French Derby before 1870, he has since repeated this success for two successive years—in 1878 with Insulaire, and in 1879 with Zut. His colors (blue jacket with red sleeves and a red cap) are as well known in England as in his own country. Within the last six years he has three times won the Oaks at Epsom with Regalia, Reine and Camelia, the Goodwood Cup with Flageolet, the two thousand guineas and the Middlepark and Dewhurst Plates with Chamant. On the 12th of June, last year, at Ascot, he gained two races out of three, and in the third one of his horses came in second.

But the count is by no means always a winner, nor does he always win with the horse that, by all signs, ought to be the victor. He has somehow acquired, whether justly or not, the reputation of being a "knowing hand" upon the turf, and all turfmen will understand what is implied in the term, whether of good or of evil. His stable has been called a "surprise-box," which simply means that the "horse carrying the first colors does not always carry the money;" that people who think they know the merits of his horses frequently lose a good deal by the unexpected turn of affairs upon the track; and that the count, in short, manages to take care of himself in exercising the undoubted right of an owner, as by rule established, to win if he can with any one of the horses that he may have running together for any given event. Nothing dishonorable, according to the laws of the turf, has ever been proved, nor perhaps even been charged, against him; but as one of his countrymen, from whom I have just now quoted, remarks, "He is fond of showing to demonstration that a man does not keep two hundred horses in training just to amuse the gallery."

These repeated triumphs, as well as the not less frequent ones of MM. Lefèvre, Lupin and de Juigné, have naturally set the English a-thinking. They have to admit that the time has passed when their handicappers could contemptuously give a French horse weights in his favor, and a party headed by Lords Falmouth, Hardwicke and Vivian and Sir John Astley of the London Jockey Club has been formed with the object of bringing about some modifications of the international code.

A war of words has ensued between Admiral Rous and Viscount Daru, the respective presidents of the two societies, in the course of which the admiral has urged that as English horses are admitted to only two races in France, the Grand Prix de Paris and the D[/e]auville Cup, while French horses are at liberty to enter upon any course in England, it is quite time that a reciprocity of privileges were recognized, and that racers be put upon an equal footing in the two countries. Not at all, replies M. Daru; and for this reason: there are three times as many race-horses in England as in France, and the small number of the latter would bring down the value of the French prizes to next to nothing if the stakes are based, as they are in England, upon the sum-total of the entries. In France the government, the encouragement societies, the towns, the railway companies, all have to help to make up the purses, and often with very considerable sums. Would it be fair to let in English horses in the proportion of, say, three to one—supposing the value of the horses to be equal—to carry off two-thirds of these subscriptions? To this the Englishman answers, not without a show of reason, that if the foreign horses should come into France in any great numbers this very circumstance would make the entrance-moneys a sufficient remuneration to the winner, and that the government, the Jockey Club and the rest would be relieved from a continuance of their subventions. The discussion is still kept up, and it is not unlikely that the successors of MM. Rous and Daru will keep on exchanging notes for some years without coming nearer to a solution than the diplomats have come to a settlement of the Eastern Question.

I have said that the Jockey Club of Paris grants subventions to the racing societies of the provinces, which it takes under its patronage to the number of about forty-five, but it undertakes the actual direction of the races at only three places—namely, Chantilly, Fontainebleau and Déauville-sur-Mer—besides those of Paris. Up to 1856, the Paris races were run on the Champ de Mars, where the track was too hard and the turns were very sharp and awkward. In the last-mentioned year the city ceded to the Société d'Encouragement the open field at Longchamps, lying between the western limit of the Bois de Boulogne and the river Seine. The ground measures about sixty-six hectares in superficial area, and this ample space has permitted the laying out of several tracks of different lengths and of varying form, and has avoided any necessity for sharp turns. The whole race-course is well sodded, and the ground is as good as artificially-made ground can be. It is kept up and improved by yearly outlays, and these very considerable expenses are confided to Mr. J. Mackenzie-Grieves, so well known for his horsemanship to all the promenaders of the Bois.

The race-course at Longchamps enjoys advantages of situation and surroundings superior, beyond all question, to those of any other in the world. The approaches to it from Paris are by an uninterrupted succession of the most charming drives—the Champs Élysées, the grand avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, and finally through the lovely shaded alleys of the Bois. Arrived at the Cascade, made famous by the attempt of Berezowski upon the life of the czar in 1867, the eye takes in at a glance the whole of the vast space devoted to the race-course, overlooked to the right by a picturesque windmill and an ancient ivy-mantled tower, and at the farther extremity by the stands for spectators. To the left the view stretches over the rich undulating hills of S[\e]vres and of Meudon, strewn with pretty villas and towers and steeples, and rests in the dim distance upon the blue horizon of Les Verriéres.

The elegant central stand or tribune, of brick and stone, is reserved for the chief of the state. In the time of the last presidency it was almost always occupied by the marshal, a great lover of horses, and by his little court; but his successor, M. Grévy, whose sporting propensities are satisfied by a game of billiards or a day's shooting with his pointers, generally waives his privilege in favor of the members of the diplomatic corps.

The stand to the left of the track is the official tribune, very gay and attractive in the days of the Empire, when it was filled by the members of the municipal council of Paris and their families, but to-day rather a blot upon the picture, the wives of the Republican ædiles belonging to a lower—though, in this case, a newer—stratum of society than did their imperial predecessors. The Jockey Club reserves for itself the first stand to the right, from which all women are rigorously excluded. The female element, however, is represented upon the lower ranges of benches, though the ladies belonging to the more exclusive circles of fashion prefer a simple chair upon the gravel of the paddock. It is there, at the foot of the club-stand, that may be seen any Sunday in spring, expanding under the rays of the vernal sun, the fresh toilettes that have bloomed but yesterday, or it may be this very morning, in the conservatories of Worth and Laferrière. The butterflies of this garden of sweets are the jaunty hats whose tender wings of azure or of rose have but just unfolded themselves to the light of day. My figure of "butterfly hats" has been ventured upon in the hope that it may be found somewhat newer than that of the "gentlemen butterflies" which the reporters of the press have chased so often and so long that the down is quite rubbed from its wings, to say nothing of the superior fitness of the comparison in the present case. In fact, the gentlemen do but very rarely flutter from flower to flower within the sacred confines of the paddock, but are much more apt to betake themselves in crowds to the less showy parterre of the betting-ground, where, under the shadow of the famous chestnut tree, such enormous wagers are laid, and especially do they congregate in the neighborhood of the tall narrow slates set up by such well-known bookmakers as Wright, Valentine and Saffery.

Each successive year sees an increase in the number of betters, who contribute indirectly, by means of subscriptions to the races, a very important proportion of the budget of the Jockey Club. But if any one should imagine from this constant growth of receipts that the taste for racing is extending in France, and is likely to become national, he would be making a great mistake: what is growing, and with alarming rapidity, is the passion for gambling, for the indulgence of which the "improvement of the breed of horses" is but a convenient and sufficiently transparent veil. Whether the money of the player rolls around the green carpet of the race-course or upon that of M. Blanc at Monte Carlo, the impulse that keeps it in motion is the same, and the book-maker's slate is as dangerous as the roulette-table. The manager of the one piles up a fortune as surely as the director of the other, and in both cases the money seems to be made with an almost mathematical certainty and regularity. They tell of one day—that of the Grand Prix of 1877—when Saffery, the Steel of the French turf and the leviathan of bookmakers, cleared as much as fifty thousand dollars. Wright, Valentine, Morris and many more make in proportion to their outlay. Four or five years ago these worthies had open offices on the Rue de Choiseul and the Boulevard des Italiens, where betting on the English and French races went on night and day; but the police, following the lead of that of London, stepped in to put an end to this traffic in contraband goods, and the shops for the sale of this sort of merchandise are now shut up. But if all this has been done, and if even those great voitures de poules which once made the most picturesque ornament of the turf, have been banished out of sight, it has been impossible to uproot the practice of betting, which has more devotees to-day than ever before. It has been discovered in other countries than France that the only way to deal with an ineradicable evil is to check its growth, and an attempt to prohibit pool-selling a year or two ago in one of the States of this Union only resulted in the adoption of an ingenious evasion whereby the pictures of the horses entered were sold at auction—a practice which is, if I am not misinformed, still kept up. The same fiction, under another form, is to be seen to-day in France. In order to bet openly one has to buy an entrance—ticket to the paddock, which costs him twenty francs, whereas the general entry to the grounds is but one franc, and any one found betting outside the enclosure or enceinte of the stables is liable to arrest. The police, no doubt, are willing to accept the theory that a man who can afford to pay twenty francs for a little square of rose- or yellow-tinted paper is rich enough to be allowed to indulge in any other extravagant freaks that he pleases.

But with all the numerous bets that are made, and the excitement and interest, that must necessarily be aroused, there is nothing of the turbulent and uproarious demonstration so characteristic of the English race-course. The "rough" element is kept away from the French turf, partly because it would find its surroundings there uncongenial with its tastes, and partly by the small entrance-fee required; and one is thus spared at Longchamps the sight of those specimens of the various forms of human misery and degradation that offend the eye at Epsom and infest even the more aristocratic meetings of Ascot and Goodwood. At the French races, too, one never hears the shrieks and howls of an English crowd, save perhaps when in some very important contest the favorite is beaten, and even then the yells come from English throats: it is the bookmakers' song of victory. A stranger at Longchamps would perceive at once that racing has no hold upon the popular heart, and that, so far as it is an amusement at all apart from the gambling spirit evoked, it is merely the hobby and pastime of a certain number of idle gentlemen. As to the great mass of spectators, who are not interested in the betting, they go to Longchamps as they would go to any place where uniforms and pretty toilettes and fine carriages are to be seen; for the Parisian, as one of them has well said, "never misses a review, and he goes to the races, although he understands nothing about them: the horses scarcely interest him at all. But there he is because he must do as 'all Paris' does: he even tries to master a few words of the barbarous jargon which it is considered bon-ton to speak at these places, for it seems that the French language, so rich, so flexible, so accurate, is insufficient to express the relations and affinities between man and the horse."

The enceinte du pesage, often called in vulgar English "the betting-ring," or the enclosure mentioned above to which holders of twenty-franc tickets are admitted, at Longchamps is scrupulously guarded by the stewards of the Jockey Club from the invasion of the demi-monde—a term that I employ in the sense in which it is understood to-day, and not in that which it bore twenty years ago. A woman of this demi-monde, which the younger Dumas has defined as that "community of married women of whom one never sees the husbands," may enter the paddock if she appears upon the arm of a gentleman, but the really objectionable element is obliged to confine itself to the five-franc stands or to wander over the public lawns. Some of the fashionable actresses of the day and the best-known belles-petites may be seen sunning themselves in their victorias or their "eight-springs" by the side of the track in front of the stands, but this is not from any interest that they feel in the performances of Zut or of Rayon d'Or, but simply because to make the "return from the races" it is necessary to have been to them, and every woman of any pretension to fashion, no matter what "world" she may belong to, must be seen in the gay procession that wends its way through the splendid avenue on the return from Longchamps.

The great day at Longchamps, that crowns the Parisian season like the "bouquet" at the end of a long series of fire-works, is the international fête of the Grand Prix de Paris, run for the first time in 1863. It is open to entire horses and to fillies of all breeds and of all countries, three-year-olds, and of the prize, one hundred thousand francs, half is given by the city of Paris and half by the five great railway companies. It was the late duc de Morny who first persuaded the municipal council and the administrations of the railways to make this annual appropriation; ail of which, together with the entries, a thousand francs each, goes to the winner, after deducting ten thousand francs given to the second horse and five thousand to the third. Last year the amount won by Nubienne, carrying fifty-three and a half kilogrammes, was one hundred and forty-one thousand nine hundred and seventy-five francs, and the time made was three minutes thirty-three seconds on a track of three thousand mètres—one mile seven furlongs, or three furlongs longer than that of the Derby at Epsom.

The fixing of Sunday for this international contest has aroused the prejudices of the English, and has been the occasion of a long correspondence between Admiral Rous and Viscount Daru, but the committee on races has refused to change the day, contending, with reason, that the French people cannot be expected to exchange their usages for those of a foreign country. Although it is understood that Queen Victoria has formally forbidden the prince of Wales to assist at these profane solemnities, this interdict has not prevented the appearance there of some of the principal personages of England, and we have several times noticed the presence of the dukes of St. Albans, Argyll, Beaufort and Hamilton, the marquis of Westminster and Lords Powlett, Howard and Falmouth; though the last, be it said, is believed to be influenced by his respect for the day in his refusal to run his horses in France.

Those who remember the foundation of the Grand Prix will recall the extraordinary excitement of the occasion, when the whole population of Paris, as one of the enemies of the new system of racing said, turned out as they would to a capital execution or the drawing of a grand lottery or the ascension of a monster balloon: the next day the name of the winner was in everybody's mouth, and there was but one great man in the universe for that day at least—he who had conceived the idea of the Grand Prix de Paris. The receipts on this occasion amounted to eighty-one thousand francs: last year they were two hundred and forty thousand. I subjoin a list of the winners from 1863 to 1879, inclusive:

Years. Horses. Owners. Nationality.

1863 The Ranger H. Savile English.

1864 Vermont H. Delamarre French.

1865 Gladiateur Comte F. de Lagrange French.

1866 Ceylon Duke of Beaufort English.

1867 Feryacques A. de Montgomery French.

1868 The Earl Marquis of Hastings English.

1869 Glaneur A. Lupin French.

1870 Sornette Major Fridolin (Ch. French. Lafitte)

1871 (Not run).

1872 Cremorne H. Savile English.

1873 Boïard H. Delamarre French.

1874 Trent W.R. Marshall English.

1875 Salvator A. Lupin French.

1876 Kisber Baltazzi Hungarian.

1877 St. Christophe Comte F. de Lagrange French.

1878 Thurio Prince Soltikoff Russian.

1879 Nubienne Edmond Blanc French.